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Putin Surprises Bush With Plan on Missile Shield

Photographers took pictures Thursday as the leaders of the Group of 8 arrived to pose for them in the German resort town of Heiligendamm.Credit
Guido Bergmann/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ROSTOCK, Germany, June 7 — After months of angrily rejecting a White House plan for missile defense in Europe, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia surprised President Bush on Thursday with an offer to build a joint system in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan.

The proposed system, designed to guard against a missile attack from Iran, poses serious diplomatic and technical challenges, experts said. But the fact that it was suggested by Mr. Putin, and not immediately rejected by Mr. Bush, indicated a desire on both sides to cool the hostile exchanges that in recent months had driven relations to a low point in the post-cold-war era.

The offer came during a much anticipated private meeting between the presidents at a gathering of leaders of wealthy democracies. Mr. Bush said that Mr. Putin had put forth “some interesting suggestions,” and that the two agreed to form a working group of military and diplomatic experts to examine how they could cooperate on missile defense, an issue that has long divided Russia and the United States.

“This will be a serious set of strategic discussions,” Mr. Bush said, standing by Mr. Putin’s side outside the Kempinski Grand Hotel, the luxury resort in the Baltic Sea town of Heiligendamm where the leaders gathered for the Group of 8 meeting. “This is a serious issue and we want to make sure that we all understand each other’s positions very clearly.”

For Mr. Putin, the offer seemed to accomplish two goals: giving the appearance of willingness to compromise on missile defense while calming jitters over his recent threat to again aim missiles at Europe. “This will make it impossible — unnecessary — for us to place our offensive complexes along the borders with Europe,” he said, speaking through an interpreter.

The unexpected proposal came on a day marked by compromise over climate change and more clashes between protesters and the police at the meeting. The United States agreed to “seriously consider” a European plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, thus averting a potential clash between Mr. Bush and the meeting’s host, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany.

But the climate change news paled in comparison to the startling developments on missile defense. With tensions between Washington and Moscow rising over Mr. Bush’s plan, a senior White House official said Thursday that Mr. Putin indicated before the meeting that he wanted to raise an idea directly with the president. But Mr. Bush was not aware of the details.

Experts say that Mr. Putin’s proposal faces a number of daunting, and possibly insurmountable, hurdles. Russia leases but does not own the radar station in Azerbaijan, and it is an early warning system, not the X-band radar that is used to guide antimissile interceptors, and which the Bush administration wants to build in the Czech Republic.

Trust between the nations is also an issue. The plan would require the kind of intense cooperation in which only the closest allies could engage. With the two sides already embroiled in disputes over the future of Kosovo, the state of democratic institutions in Russia and how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, some experts raised questions about whether Mr. Putin was serious — and, if he was, whether the White House would ever accept the offer.

“For that kind of cooperation, to be treated seriously by the United States and NATO, they would have to have more trust than people really do now toward the Russian military,” said Stephen Sestanovich, an expert on Russia at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The question is, can you one day have the Russians acting in such a way as to advertise their lack of trust in the United States, and the next day insist that the United States trust them?”

Still, Thursday’s announcement at Heiligendamm, a few miles west of Rostock, was a far cry from what some had expected from the two presidents, given Mr. Putin’s recent harsh statements.

In recent weeks, the Russian president has made a veiled comparison between the United States and the Third Reich, complained of “diktat and imperialism,” and, most recently, threatened to once more aim Russian missiles at Europe if Mr. Bush went through with his missile defense plan.

Earlier this week in Prague, Mr. Bush chided Mr. Putin for backsliding on democratic reforms — an issue that Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said did not come up at Thursday’s meeting.

Photo

President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Bush at the Group of 8 meeting Thursday in Heiligendamm, Germany. Credit
Ralph Orlowski/Getty Images

But on Thursday the two men stood shoulder to shoulder, laughing and smiling as they recounted for reporters what Mr. Bush described as “a very constructive dialogue.”

“I told Vladimir we’re looking forward to having him up to my folks’ place in Maine,” the president said, referring to an invitation he has extended for the Russian leader to visit the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport for further talks in the beginning of July.

Mr. Putin, for his part, praised the president for a “spirit of openness.”

When they were done, Mr. Bush extended his right hand for Mr. Putin, who took it, and then clasped his left hand over the entire handshake.

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Under Mr. Bush’s proposal, the United States would build a network of radar defenses in the Czech Republic and missile interceptors in Poland, as a way to defend against possible attacks from what Mr. Bush calls “rogue nations,” particularly Iran. Mr. Putin regards the plan as a threat to Russia’s security, and is especially concerned about the interceptors in Poland.

Officials from both sides said Thursday that Mr. Putin had not dropped his opposition to the Poland part of the plan, even as he put forth an alternative, for the United States to use the radar station in the town of Gabala in northeast Azerbaijan.

Russia uses the station under a lease agreement with Azerbaijan. Mr. Putin said he had spoken on Wednesday to Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, who he said “stressed he will be only glad to contribute to the cause of global security and stability.” Azeri officials were not available for comment on Thursday evening.

The idea that the United States and Russia might share data from early warning satellites is not entirely new. It has been kicked around in the Russian news media recently, and Mr. Hadley said the proposal “has some elements we have heard before,” but Mr. Putin presented it in a far more detailed and specific way.

“I thought this was a master stroke on his part,” said Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The core question is whether he is inclined to seriously cooperate with us, which I think he is, or is he just trying to put a monkey wrench in the works?”

By proposing that the United States and Russia jointly use what Mr. Putin called “the Russian radar at Gabala in Azerbaijan,” the Russian president at once offered Mr. Bush a way to alleviate the Kremlin’s worries about the intentions and possible consequences of missile defense in Europe, and presented his American counterpart with a fresh diplomatic challenge.

One of the Kremlin’s objections to the notion of a missile defense system in Europe is that it could, in theory, intercept a missile launched from Iran as it flew through Russian airspace. Russian officials have pointed out that this would mean two military missiles colliding over Russia, and that the debris from any explosion could endanger Russian people and property. Mr. Putin said that locating the system in Azerbaijan could alleviate this risk, and that interceptors could be fired from Aegis cruisers, rather than from Poland.

American officials reacted cautiously to the offer, though after weeks of trying to tamp down the language coming out of the Kremlin, they said they viewed it as a step in the right direction.

“I think it’s really too soon to say where this heads,” Mr. Hadley said, adding: “I think also President Putin wanted to de-escalate the tensions a little bit on this issue. And I think it was a useful thing that he did.”

Just last week, Mr. Hadley had practically thrown up his hands on the prospect of Russian cooperation on the missile defense issue, saying Democratic and Republican administrations had been trying for 17 years to secure such cooperation, and “I cannot tell you, for the life of me, why they say no.”

A spokesman for Mr. Putin, Dmitri Peskov, told reporters after the meeting that the Russian president had decided to make the offer because “dialogue is better than mutual silence.” He added, “This offer shows once again that President Putin is ready to find consensus and he’s ready to find solutions, not by confronting, not by threatening anyone — well, he’s never done that, actually — but by working together.”